Quilts, Research About the Quilt Blocks With Stars

The following is a quote from Collecting Quilts:  Investments in America's Heritage by Cathy Gaines Florence, from American Quilter's Society, Paducah, Kentucky, 1985. 

The "Le Moyne" star design was a favorite pattern in America.  It was based on the crest of two French-Canadian brother explorers.  In 1699, one brother, Pierre, the Sieur  d"Iberville helped found colonies near what are now Biloxi, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama.  Pierre died of a fever in 1706 at age 45.  The other, Jean Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville, settled some French colonists by Lake Pontchartrain in 1718 and called the settlement New Orleans.  When Napoleon abruptly decided to sell the French holding in America, trade flooded down the Mississippi and ladies were quick to notice the Le Moyne crest as a design worthy of their quilts.  Two hundred years later, their "flag still flies" in quilts throughout the land!